Tag Archives: MAGA

media news

Media conspiracy? Non-starter!

As I listen to Donald Trump’s idiotic rants about “media conspiring” to keep him from being elected to public office, the more I am drawn to a piece of wisdom a newspaper editor once told me.

He said that publishing a newspaper each day was nothing short of “a miracle.” Which means to me that just getting a newspaper out the back door and onto people’s front porches each day required every bit of know-how an editor and his or her team of reporters could muster.

OK, let’s establish off the top that Trump doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Let’s also establish something else … which is that your blogger acquired a good bit of inside info on publishing a newspaper during the nearly 37 years I spent pursuing my craft.

When I cite the editor’s contention of a “modern miracle” occurring, consider all the things that could go wrong during the publication of a newspaper. The presses could explode; electricity could fail; storms could erupt; a reporter might die on deadline as he or she is writing the lead story for that day’s newspaper.

I have been accused of conspiring against portions of a community. I have told accusers the same thing every time: I don’t have time to conspire against anyone; I am too busy just getting a newspaper published to think about how to damage a segment of my community. My answer usually didn’t dissuade the accuser. Whatever …

But in the larger debate, the media have become targets of the MAGA morons who insist that they — the media — have the authority, the ability and the wherewithal to conspire against right-wingers.

B … S!

The nature of the craft I pursued simply made such conspiracies impossible. The editor who told me about the daily “miracle” was onto something. It takes a journalist every bit of intellectual firepower just to get his or her work out the door.

legal news, local news, State news

Lt. Gov. deserves props

Dan Patrick deserves a good word from this blogger today … for the way he is conducting the trial of his fellow Republican, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Patrick, of course, is the GOP Texas lieutenant governor who at the moment is presiding over Paxton’s impeachment trial. Patrick pledged to be impartial and non-biased when the Senate received the overwhelming impeachment articles from the Texas House.

I had harbored private doubts that Patrick could be faithful to his pledge. I was mistaken.

So very often in high-profile judicial or, in this case, quasi-judicial proceedings, the presiding judge seems to hog the spotlight. Example given? Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the so-called “trial of the century” in 1995 in the case of OJ Simpson and whether he killed his former wife and her friend.

Ito let the lawyers go on and on, ad nauseum, refusing to constrain them, which he could have done as the presiding judge.

Dan Patrick has been hardly mentioned in this first week of the Paxton trial. Which is a good thing. He has let the lawyers for Paxton and the House have the floor and has administered the proceedings efficiently and without bias.

Why was I concerned about Patrick? Hey, he’s a politician … and a gregarious one at that!

Whether this impeachment trial results in a conviction or an acquittal shouldn’t hinge on Patrick’s conduct as the presiding officer. That doesn’t appear to be the case and for that I, as a keenly interested Texas resident, am grateful.

national news

Polling data = real-time snapshot

All the polling data we are seeing these days showing a neck-and-neck race between President Joe Biden and the man he defeated in 2020 remind me of historical precedent.

Which is to say that today’s polling data don’t mean squat this far out from an upcoming election.

Yes, I have commented on my frustration that Donald Trump even can collect 35 to 40% of the electorate’s favor, given all he has said, done and demonstrated since he became a politician in 2015.

But I want to revisit some recent presidential polling history to remind you of how volatile these polls can become.

Remember that public opinion polls are merely a real-time snapshot of what is on people’s minds. Opinions change.

Prior to the 1984 election, Walter Mondale was seen as a legitimate challenger to President Reagan. The president was re-elected with an 18% margin and a 49-state Electoral College wipeout. In 1992, Ross Perot actually led President George H.W. Bush and former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Perot finished with 19% of the vote and zero Electoral College votes, while Bill Clinton breezed to election.

Four years later, Sen. Bob Dole was neck-and-neck with the president, but then lost decisively. In 2008, Sen. John McCain was seen as a possible winner against Sen. Barack Obama; it didn’t happen. Obama was in danger four years later of losing to Mitt Romney; he won comfortably.

Today’s polling data mean next to nothing. Trump is going on trial on at least two of the indictments leveled against him prior to the GOP primary season. Americans are going to get a snootful from courtrooms about the way he conducted himself during his time in office and, most damaging, after he lost the 2020 election.

I am going to stand squarely on my view that Donald Trump is not electable in 2024. Period. He has no vision for the future, other than telling us how he intends to exact revenge on his foes. His unfitness for public office cannot be stated any more starkly than that.

The polling data will be there to remind us … in real time.

national news

Who is this new carnival barker?

Who in the world is Vivek Ramaswamy, who I believe is trying to emerge as the Republican Party’s new snake-oil vendor of choice?

Dude is 38 years of age. He’s never held a public office. I don’t yet know how he acquired his wealth … I’ll have to look it up. He talks some wild game about opposing further aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and then says Donald Trump’s actions on 1/6 were “abhorrent” but he remains in Trump’s camp if the twice-impeached, four-times indicted former POTUS gets nominated by the GOP next summer.

Ramaswamy is weird, man.

This political newbie might be making some waves among Republican base voters, aka the MAGA morons on the far-right wing of a once-great political party.

What part of Ramaswamy’s background concerns me the most? It might be his lack of political exposure or experience. We saw what happened the last time Americans elected such an individual. He shot off his mouth and got impeached for seeking a political favor from a foreign head of state; he got impeached again for inciting the mob to storm the Capitol Building to stop the counting of Electoral College votes after the 2020 presidential election.

Do we want to hand another political neophyte the nuclear launch codes?

Hmmm … hell no!

military news, national news

Sen. Tuberville: No. 1 dumbass

Congress has been populated over its more than two centuries of existence by many dumbasses and … yes, I will stipulate that they come from both sides of the partisan aisle.

However, the No. 1 dumbass in the Senate happens to be a Republican, a former major college football coach and an idiot who is spitting in the faces of the men and women who deserve nothing but respect from the people who serve in our government.

Sen. Dumbass is Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, whose one-man blockage campaign has held up the promotions of dozens of senior officers and denied the Marine Corps of being led by a commandant for the first time in the Corps’ history.

Why is that? Because Sen. Dumbass says the military allows women who serve to obtain abortions, in addition to any of the other reproductive health care issues that need attention.

Dumbass’s campaign has put the nation’s military preparedness in jeopardy. He is denying the military its full complement of general-grade officers because this foolish effort to deny those who serve the opportunity to obtain legally provided health care.

What the hell is happening to us? Imagine for just a moment what the Republican outcry would be if a Democrat was employing a one-senator rule to block appointments in the military because of a policy disagreement. Senate rules empower one senator with the authority to act as Sen. Dumbass has done.

The very idea that a Republican senator is laying waste to the military high command is enough to send many of us into a frenzy.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is set to retire next month. Will Sen. Dumbass block Gen. Milley’s successor from ascending to the Joint Chiefs chair? What in the world must this be doing to morale among the soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and Coast Guardsman and women we ask to defend us?

Sen. Dumbass needs to stand down and let our armed forces do their jobs.

local news

Wishing the best, but concerned …

Oh, how I want to give Keith Self the benefit of the doubt as he settles more firmly into his new public office: as a congressman representing the Third Congressional District of Texas.

Self is my elected representative, which means I have some skin in the game he is playing while seeking to earn his spurs as a junior member of the House of Representatives.

I have heard a good bit already from this former Collin County judge. To be candid, I am a bit alarmed that he’s bitten from the fruit offered by the MAGA-inspired, Freedom Caucus wing of the Republican Party.

He admitted at a meeting I attended the other day he voted for fire-breather Jim Jordan to be House speaker in order to get the eventual Man of the House, Kevin McCarthy, to agree to demands made by the MAGA crowd. McCarthy eventually buckled and the far-right-wingers who opposed McCarthy came around. Self was one of them.

He wants the House to inquire into whether to impeach President Biden. It made me go: What? Why? For what reason? He also is concerned that McCarthy might pull impeachment inquiry off the table, which is a non-starter in the Book According to Self. As we learned during Donald Trump’s twin impeachments, those who favor an inquiry generally want to take the next step. So … I’ll put Rep. Self in the category of congressmen and women who want to impeach the president.

To what end? For what good cause? It’s a mystery to me.

I was one of those North Texans who was quite sure that former Rep. Van Taylor of Allen would be re-elected in 2022. Silly me. I didn’t expect Taylor — a Republican — to end his campaign after revealing he had engaged in an affair with a woman once married to an officer of the Islamic State.

Self and Taylor were set to face each other in a GOP runoff. Taylor’s withdrawal handed the nomination to Self, who then defeated his Democratic opponent.

One thing that seems apparent to me is that Self will not follow the path forged by Taylor, who prided himself in working with Democrats, seeking consensus on ideas he hoped would lead to legislation.

But … it’s still early in Keith Self’s new career. Maybe he can find some bipartisan “religion” that can please skeptics such as me.

crime news

Impeach POTUS? For what?

I am still scratching my noggin over Republican efforts to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Biden.

My curiosity comes from this simple question: What are the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the president allegedly committed?

My quick answer: There aren’t any. My more complicated examination: The GOP is paying Democrats back for impeaching their guy, Donald Trump, twice for crimes he clearly committed while sitting in the office of the presidency.

Republicans want their retribution — if I can borrow that term from Trumps’ own glossary.

Trump infamously got Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the phone and asked him for a political favor in exchange for weaponry to use against a possible Russian invasion. Trump wanted Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. The Constitution forbids such a thing. So, the House impeached Trump,

Then came the 1/6 assault on our government by the traitorous mob that acted at the behest of Trump. The House impeached him a second time.

You know how those impeachments turned out.

So now the House is pondering an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. It is looking for something, anything, to hang on Joe Biden.

Oh, is this where I mention that the president is seeking re-election in 2024? Is there any correlation between that and this phony impeachment inquiry? Looks like it to me.

One of the GOP zealots happens to be the Republican who represents the Third Congressional District in North Texas, Keith Self. He told a Farmersville gathering this week that he wants an inquiry but didn’t specify the charges that should be examined.

An impeachment inquiry against a president who has spent his entire professional life in public service looks like an exercise in revenge. This is what we get when we send zealous ideologues — rather than dedicated public servants — to Congress.

national news

Why punish ’em because of one man?

Never will I understand the “rationale” that has gripped the modern Republican Party, which is turning its ire on politicians who have the temerity to oppose a single individual … with zero regard to their established records.

You know to whom I refer. Donald Trump has established a cult following among so-called “core” Republicans. That core takes its vengeance out on politicians and political candidates who bitch out loud about the immorality and unfitness for public office that Trump exhibits multiple times daily.

Such political petulance has cost the GOP core several key figures in the ranks of politicians who formerly carried the party’s message forward.

Liz Cheney is one of the victims. She had the nerve to declare Trump to be an existential threat to our national political fabric. Her punishment was to be voted out in the 2022 GOP primary in Wyoming, which she represented in the U.S. House of Representatives.

She is as conservative as they come. Her record opposing abortion, gun control legislation, excessive taxes and so many other hot-button issues is intact. It’s not good enough for the MAGA morons who dominate the political landscape in her state.

Same for Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. He voted to convict Trump in both of his Senate impeachment trials. Now comes word that the MAGA minions will “primary” him when his term comes up. What the hell? He was the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee and remains a staunch, avid and vocal conservative. He also believes Trump is a chump, a phony and a fraud.

Those are just two prime examples of the disease that has infected a once-great political party. The GOP has become one man’s play thing to the detriment of those who believe in actual conservative values, not to mention to the rest of us who worry about the future of our democratic republic.

It’s all so sad and sickening.

crime news

Baffled beyond belief

Let me be abundantly clear about the state of play in the upcoming 2024 presidential election campaign.

I cannot understand and never will accept how it is that a former POTUS, twice impeached while he was in office who now stands indicted on allegations that he committed 91 felony crimes remains the favorite among those who subscribe to a major political party.

And that they are poised to nominate him to run for the office he lost in the previous election even if he is convicted of any of the felonies. 

I need someone to explain to me how a voting public can be so ignorant and blind to the reality posed by the consequences of a potential conviction. The man could face a sentence of effectively serving the rest of his life in prison.

Still, he might be nominated by the Republican Party to run for the presidency … yet again!

What the hell is wrong with this picture?

Donald Trump remains the top candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. He won’t show up for presidential debates to face his gaggle of GOP primary foes. His legal team is seeking to stall the start of four criminal trials in which Trump is a criminal defendant.

He said if he’s elected to the presidency, that he will be “the retribution” of those who believe he has been done wrong. He would pardon himself and the 1/6 traitors who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election by launching the assault on our Capitol Building.

Some of Trump’s primary foes say his conduct was abhorrent and wrong … but they’d still support him if he’s the nominee.

Good grief!

I stand behind my belief he won’t be nominated. He might not even be eligible to run for office, given the Constitution’s stipulation that anyone who commits an insurrection or gives “aid and comfort’ to those who do is disqualified.

How in the world, though, have we come to the point where this is even a discussion topic?

crime news, legal news, local news

Paxton trial about to begin … bring it!

A source I have developed at a major Texas university told me this week — off the record — about what he thinks might happen when Ken Paxton stands trial in the Texas Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors he allegedly committed while serving as Texas attorney general.

My source said it’s a tough call, “but right now I’d say he gets acquitted.” He said the Senate’s partisan makeup, with 18 Republicans and 12 Democrats, likely could save Paxton from being kicked out of office if he is convicted of any of the crimes alleged against him.

“But that could change” once the trial begins,” my friend said.

The Texas House impeached Paxton in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote; many House Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in impeaching Paxton based on the unanimous recommendation of the House committee tasked with examining the myriad complaints against Paxton.

The panel ruled that Paxton took a bribe from a key campaign ally and abused the power of his office to conceal an extramarital affair.

The Senate trial begins Tuesday. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate and the trial, imposed a sweeping gag order on senators, a decision I happen to endorse. The bar is set high for conviction, as the Senate needs a two-thirds vote to toss Paxton out of office.

The impeachment managers have brought in some heavy hitters to serve as legal counsel for the prosecution. Paxton’s legal team has asked that all but one of the 30-plus counts in the impeachment articles be dismissed.

I am one Texan who wants the AG tossed out, if only to rid the state of the constant embarrassment this clown brings to the law enforcement office he oversees.

Are there enough Republicans in the Senate who will join their Democratic colleagues in making the same decision, that they are fed up with the conduct of an attorney general who brings shame to the high office he occupies?

Let us hope so.